The personal blog of Peter Lee a.k.a. "China Hand"... Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel, and an open book to those who read. You are welcome to contact China Matters at the address chinamatters --a-- prlee.org or follow me on twitter @chinahand.

Saturday, September 29, 2012

[This is my September 28, 2012 article for Asia Times Online, with a correction explained in the endnote. It can be reposted if ATOl is credited and a link provided.]

China's strategy on
the Diaoyu Islands, or Senkakus as Japan calls
them, appears to reflect careful calculation of
risk and reward by the Beijing leadership, rather
than the spasm of counterproductive nationalism
sometimes described in the Western press. As a
matter of equity, China has a pretty strong claim
on the Senkakus. As a matter of geopolitics, the
People's Republic of China (PRC) is not holding as
weak a hand as one might think.

This is
something that the administration of US President
Barack Obama, to its chagrin, knows well.

Careful readers of The Japan Times
(presumably including strategists in Beijing)
may remember this passage from August 17, 2010:

The Obama administration has decided
not to state explicitly that the Senkaku
Islands, which are under Japan's control but
claimed by China, are subject to the Japan-US
security treaty, in a shift from the position of
George W Bush, sources said Monday. The
administration of Barack Obama has already
notified Japan of the change in policy, but
Tokyo may have to take countermeasures in light
of China's increasing activities in the East
China Sea, according to the sources.
[1]

The Japanese "countermeasure"
occurred less than three weeks later, on September
8, 2010, when Japan's ambitious minister of the
interior, Seiji Maehara, instructed the coast
guard to turn over the captain of a Chinese
fishing boat to prosecutors for trial under
Japanese law for ramming a pair of coast-guard
vessels while trying to evade them near the
Senkakus.

The rest is "contain China"
history, as the spat escalated to a crisis in
Sino-Japanese relations and lip service in favor
of Japan's rights to the Senkakus became an
important element of US East Asian policy and
justification for the Obama administration's pivot
into Asia.

Discreet silence also played a
role, when the United States declined to
contradict Maehara (by this time foreign minister)
when he claimed, perhaps untruthfully, that he had
obtained assurances that the Senkakus were covered
by the US-Japan Security Treaty. [2] [3]

However, US enthusiasm for using the
Senkaku dispute as a useful diplomatic lever
appears to be reaching its limit.

Two
major US dailies, The New York Times and the Los
Angeles Times, recently weighed in with reviews of
the history of the islands that may cause the
Japanese government some heartburn. Nicholas
Kristof turned his NYT column over to a Taiwanese
scholar, Han Yishaw, to lay out China's historical
claims to the islands. [4]

The LA Times'
Barbara Demick also looked skeptically at the
Japanese provenance of the Senkakus with a piece
describing the research of scholar Unryu Suganuma,
who found several references in Japanese
government documents describing the Chinese
character of the islands. [5]

A glance at
a map confirms the impression that the
Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands are in Taiwan's backyard,
and Japanese efforts to claim them are almost as
risible as China's infamous South China
Sea-swallowing nine-dash line.

Japan's
claim to incontestable sovereignty over the
islands goes back no further than their seizure,
together with Taiwan and the Ryukyu Islands, from
the Qing empire in the 1895 Sino-Japanese War, and
not being forced to give them back in the
post-World War II muddle.

The "spoils of
war" argument, aka we got 'em and by golly we're
gonna keep 'em approach, is an awkward one for
Japan. It would dearly like to get back four
islands on the southern end of an archipelago
stretching between the Kamchatka Peninsula and
Hokkaido, which are now occupied by Russia as heir
to the Soviet Union's spoils of war.

The
short form of this imbroglio is the "Kurile
Islands dispute", but the two southernmost islands
are more Hokkaido-esque, and Russia has signaled a
willingness to give them up. The two more
northerly islands are bona fide members of the
Kurile chain. Russia wants to keep them. Japan
wants them. Awkwardly for Japan, in 1956 it
promised to surrender its claims to these two
islands if a formal peace treaty were concluded.

Given this unfavorable position, Japan
must contest the "spoils of war" argument and rely
on emotive, historical claims to the islands - the
exact opposite of its position on the
Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands.

The "exercised
sovereignty" argument also provides no comfort to
Japan in its dispute with South Korea over the
Dokdo Islands (Takeshima to the Japanese). After
the conclusion of World War II, the United States
supported the historical Japanese claims to the
islands but declined to put their defense within
the scope of the US-Japan Joint Security Treaty.

Since 1991, the main island has been home
to a family of South Korean octopus fishermen and
about three dozen Republic of Korea Coast Guard,
fishery, and lighthouse personnel. President Lee
Myung-bak has visited, as well as thousands of
South Korean tourists who take a US$250 ferry trip
to the island.

In July 2008, the
administration of then-US president George W Bush
acknowledged South Korean control over the islands
by designating them as ROK territory.

Therefore, Japan's attempts to hold on to
the Senkakus on the principle that their effective
de facto control, by itself, constitutes de jure
sovereignty undermines its arguments on Dokdo and
the Kuriles. This inconsistency, one might assume,
does not make an ironclad case to the United
States to encourage a regional confrontation over
Japanese dismay over Chinese pretensions to the
rocks.

This year, the Japanese government
is also facing a cannier and better-prepared PRC
government than the flustered and panicky regime
it confronted in 2010.

At that time,
Beijing overreacted verbally and administratively
and made the mistake of intervening as a
government to disrupt trade with Japan to
retaliate for the threat to put the skipper of the
offending Chinese fishing vessel, Captain Zhan
Qixiong, on trial in a Japanese court.

It
tried to package its moves to pressure Japan as
enforcement of trade regulations, particularly in
the wild and wooly rare-earths business, but this
was seen as a distinction without a difference,
and the PRC was widely condemned by foreign
governments and media. As a public relations
bonus, China also stood accused of threatening the
free world's full enjoyment of iPads and green
energy and, indeed, attempting to bring America's
high-tech defense industries to heel by exploiting
its dominance over precious rare-earth oxides.

The ruckus over export and import
restrictions - and the possibility of retaliation
- also threatened China's access to the global
free-trade regime, a critical matter given the its
reliance on exports for growth and social
stability. Beyond the threat of bilateral
retaliation, there was the possibility that the
issue would internationalize, with some sort of
coordinated sanction against China.

This
year, things are different.

When the
Japanese right wing (which feels it got
shortchanged by government appeasers who released
Captain Zhan in 2010) served up its latest
provocation - the campaign by Tokyo Governor
Shintaro Ishihara to purchase the Senkakus - the
central government tried to defuse the situation
by purchasing the islands itself.

Nevertheless, the Chinese government
decided to make an issue of it, apparently to
demonstrate to Japan's elite the high cost of
pursuing an agenda of confrontation with the PRC
over the pretext of the Senkakus.

As
usual, Beijing is staying away from anything that
might be construed as a direct military threat to
the Japanese forces arrayed near the Senkakus.

Indeed, its first aircraft carrier, the
Liaoning (originally Ukraine's
Varyag, then repurposed as a floating
casino and now destined to become an instantaneous
and expensive artificial reef if it ever attempts
naval operations against the United States or
Japan), entered service on September 25. However,
it is not going anywhere near the Senkakus and
will need years and billions of yuan before it is
a viable military air-operations platform.

Out of consideration for its key North
Asia ally, the United States has declined to
follow through on its previous intention to treat
the Senkakus as it did the Dokdo and place them
outside the scope of Article 5 of the US-Japan
Security Treaty. Recently, Defense Secretary Leon
Panetta affirmed that an attack on the Senkakus
would evoke a US military response on behalf of
Japan.

However, the fact that Beijing
apparently has no intention of attacking the
Senkakus has understandably given more weight to
Panetta's statement that the United States has no
position on the conflicting sovereignty claims and
hopes that the Chinese and Japanese governments
will work out the issue peaceably.

This
time around, the Chinese government is not only
avoiding inflammatory moves that would
internationalize the dispute; in important ways,
it is even de-bilateralizing it. In contrast to
2010, China is not directly interfering in foreign
trade with Japan. Instead, Japanese interests
inside China have been threatened directly by
Chinese citizens, albeit egged on by their
government.

This is a distinction that has
been carefully drawn in Sino-Japanese
confrontations over the past century and is
probably well understood by current strategists.

Before World War II, "boycott" was an
all-purpose descriptor for two different
activities: what we would now call a popular
boycott of people declining to buy certain goods,
and also what is now called official government
economic sanctions instituted by fiat.

It
was a matter of some anxiety for the Chinese
government to draw a line between the two,
particularly during the "Great Boycott" in 1931
protesting the Japanese incursion into Manchuria
(whose anniversary by coincidence occurred on
September 19, at the height of this year's
anti-Japanese rumpus), since the Japanese
government at the time was inclined to engage in
real warfare to retaliate for what it deemed
economic warfare by China.

Today, with the
anti-Japanese measures framed as a popular
boycott, as long as the Chinese demonstrations
stay away from red lines as defined in the Vienna
Convention on Diplomatic Relations - which
obligates the PRC to uphold the inviolability of
the premises, personnel and property, both
official and personal, of the Japanese diplomatic
mission - then offenses against Japanese persons
and property fall into the black hole of Chinese
domestic civil and criminal law.

Ministry of Commerce spokesman
Shen Danyang carefully made the distinction in a
statement to reporters on September 19 (in a
rather garbled translation):

Shen Danyang released three-point
statement, the Ministry of Commerce strongly
supports legitimate, rational, patriotic action,
firmly opposed to all illegal thwarted grab [of
the Diaoyutai Islands]; the legitimate rights
and interests of foreign-invested enterprises in
China are protected by law. China is a country
ruled by law, the legitimate rights and
interests of foreign-invested enterprises are
protected by Chinese laws. Third, I believe that
the vast majority of people can be calm,
rational, legal and orderly express their
demands. Foreign-invested enterprises, such as
suffered violations should seek help in a timely
manner to the relevant departments of the public
security departments, including the business
sector. [6]

For the historically
minded, this allows the Chinese government to
present the demonstrations as the spiritual heir
to the series of protests against
Japanese aggression that occurred between 1908 and
1931.

And if the Japanese government
itself wants to reawaken memories of its detested
extraterritorial privileges in China under the
Qing and Kuomintang regimes, it is welcome to call
on the PRC government to moderate the behavior of
the demonstrators, and implore the Chinese courts
to improve their efforts to protect the persons
and property of Japanese citizens inside the PRC.

The Japanese newspaper Asahi Shinbum did
its best to rekindle the spirit of 2010, if not
1931, mischaracterizing the Ministry of Commerce's
statement of support for private boycotts as
"economic sanctions", as in "China suggests
economic sanctions over Senkakus". [7]

In
the same article, Asahi also tried to get some
geopolitical mileage by playing the rare-earths
card with an anxious description of an
announcement of restructuring in the Chinese
rare-earths industry, while admitting the changes
had long been expected, but then tried to have it
both ways:

China Central Television said
September 19 that the Ministry of Land and
Resources will slash the number of companies
licensed to mine rare-earth elements by 40%,
from 113 to 67.

That policy was
published six days earlier and the companies to
be affected were informed in August. In
addition, cutting the number of mining companies
is not expected to directly affect rare-earth
exports to Japan.

However, the state-run
broadcaster's report could be taken as a warning
of stronger measures against the Japanese
government for its purchase of three of the
Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea from a
private owner on September
11.

Actually, the Chinese government
has done a pretty good job of erecting a defense
against the accusation of rare-earth economic
warfare this time, as the lead from an article by
David Stanway for Reuters in July demonstrates:

China, the world's biggest producer
of rare-earth metals, is likely to turn an
importer of the vital industrial ingredients by
as early as 2014 as it boosts consumption in
domestic high-tech industries rather than just
shipping raw material overseas.
[8]

The "economic warfare" dog doesn't
appear to be hunting internationally, since
boycotts against Japanese companies inside China
will be just as harmful to the Chinese economy as
they are to Japan's.

Perhaps the most
remarkable canine element of the current
Senkaku/Diaoyu dustup, however, is the dog that
didn't bark. Or, to be more accurate, the two dogs
that didn't bark and the one that did ... but on
China's behalf.

One would have thought
that the PRC's tussle with Japan would have been
the perfect opportunity for Beijing's two major
South China Sea adversaries, the Philippines and
Vietnam, to put the boot in, to draw attention to
China's habitual high-handedness in island matters
and strengthen the argument for the US-led pivot.
That hasn't happened, perhaps because the United
States has taken itself out of the game by
limiting its involvement to exclusively military
scenarios against the Senkakus.

The
Philippine and Vietnamese governments have been
relatively silent on the issue, perhaps because of
some special Chinese attention.

To smooth
over the disagreements with the Philippines, some
high-profile emollient was personally applied by
Vice-President Xi Jinping to the Philippine
interior secretary in Beijing on September 21. In
a practical and obliging vein - and in contrast to
the huffing and puffing over the Scarborough Shoal
- the Chinese government agreed to reschedule
repayment of a US$500 million loan for a canceled
rail project and discuss selling its stake in the
Philippine national power grid, and promised to go
easy on inspection of banana imports. [9]

Xi was also present at the China-ASEAN
trade expo in Guangxi. Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung attended and for whatever economic
or geopolitical reason, China-bashing apparently
was not on the menu there either, as Voice of
Vietnam reported:

As for Taiwan,
it sowed confusion in the ranks of China-bashers
and, one expects, a certain dismay in the hearts
of Japan's diplomats by sending 40 fishing vessels
and 12 patrol boats into Senkaku waters to engage
in a water-cannon fight with the Japan Coast
Guard, thus muddying the heretofore pristine
narrative of Japanese maritime professionals vs
mainland Chinese aggressors. The Telegraph posted
video of the thrilling display. [11]

Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou, for whom
the Senkakus has been a signature issue throughout
his career, was clearly behind the provocation. In
fact, it was alleged that the confrontation had
been carefully scripted among Taiwan, the PRC and
Japan to make sure things didn't get out of hand.
[12]

One can speculate as to whether
President Ma's main motivation was to provide aid
and comfort to his political supporters in Beijing
or he felt compelled to make a protest against
Japan for nationalizing the Senkakus and, in the
process, ignoring his political interests and
sensibilities.

In any case, at the end of
the day Japan found itself with a
less-than-slam-dunk case for the Senkakus in the
court of (non-Japanese) opinion, backed with
limited and conditional US support, receiving
little if any enthusiastic backing from its
neighbors, and taking it on the chin financially
from the anti-Japanese demonstrations inside
China.

With this context, it looks as if
the PRC regime decided after the 2010 debacle
that, next time the Senkaku issue surfaced, it was
going to be ready with an integrated strategy of
mass mobilization, economic harassment, avoidance
of direct government-to-government economic and
military confrontation, a regional charm
offensive, and an expectation of US forbearance.

This appears to be a more plausible
scenario for the current Senkaku dynamic than the
dissident and China-bashing-fueled claim that the
PRC ginned up the dispute to distract attention
from domestic political unrest in the run-up to
the 18th Communist Party Congress and leadership
succession.

Allowing large crowds of
disgruntled Chinese citizens to flood on to the
streets - quite a few of them waving pictures of
Mao Zedong in an implied expression of solidarity
with purged "Red Mayor" Bo Xilai and a rebuke to
his current persecutors in the power structure,
and others willing to engage in criminal behavior
and mix it up with security forces in order to
make a spectacle of their atavistic nationalist
fervor - is not a recipe for political calm.

It is more likely that the regime decided
to roll the dice and enable widespread
demonstrations in pursuit of its geostrategic
strategy against Japan, and breathed a sigh of
relief when things didn't get completely out of
hand.

In other words, the viability of the
Chinese-mass-opinion weapon - which such outlets
as Global Times have been touting for the past few
years - albeit applied in carefully controlled
anti-Japanese doses, has been demonstrated to the
Japanese government and business community.

Therefore, it isn't too surprising that
Japanese Deputy Foreign Minister Chikai Kawai has
gone to Beijing to try to ease the dispute. The
Chinese Foreign Ministry position is that Japan
has to "make strong efforts to improve
Sino-Japanese relations", though one has to wonder
what those efforts are supposed to involve.

Those "efforts" probably include a
Japanese undertaking to coordinate and consult
with China on regional affairs instead of
maintaining a united front with Washington on
matters related to the US pivot and trade blocs.
Whether a geopolitical and economic reset can be
negotiated, let alone survive the expected change
of national administration in Japan - and the
Senkakus can fade into deserved insignificance -
remains to be seen.

Saturday, September 22, 2012

[This piece originally appeared in a slightly different form at Asia Times Online. It can be reposted if ATOl is acknowledged and a link provided.]

It
has been a rough couple of weeks for the
international neo-liberal adventure.

The
most obvious bump in the road occurred in the
Middle East. The North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) facilitated deposition of
Muammar Gaddafi in Libya was supposed to be the
"shake the Etch-a-Sketch" moment (Mitt Romney
campaign-speak for wiping away accumulated
negative memories and replacing them with new,
favorable impressions) that established the United States as the
principled champion of democracy and popular
aspirations in the Arab world.

It turned
out that plenty of people (and, apparently, at
least one government) still remembered the whole
invasion of Iraq/support of Israel against the
Palestinians/backstopping Gulf autocrats/we were
for Hosni Mubarak before we were against
him/magillah.

On the anniversary of 9/11
and on the pretext of outrage at the crudely
provocative video Innocence of Mohammed,
angry mobs appeared before US embassies and
consulates throughout the region and trashed
numerous US-related businesses.

To make
matters worse, in Benghazi, the epicenter for love
of all things American in the Arab Middle East,
the demonstrations coincided with a ferocious
assault on the US consulate that overwhelmed both
the consulate's security and whatever resources
the local authorities could bring to bear. The US
ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and
three other Americans perished in the attack.

The Libyan national government put aside,
at least publicly, whatever differences it has
with the fractious lords of Benghazi, apologized
profusely in the name of the Libyan people, and
obligingly arrested 50 suspects.

The
Egyptian government, less eager to present itself
as the protector of American interests, physical
and otherwise, was more laggard in its
condemnation of the outrages committed against the
US embassy in Cairo, thereby earning it a pointed
rebuke from President Barack Obama.

The
less obvious but far more significant setback
occurred in China.

On the anniversary of
the Mukden Incident, and on the pretext of
outrage at a crudely provocative purchase of the
Senkaku/Daioyu Islands by the Japanese government,
angry mobs appeared before Japanese embassies and
consulates throughout the country and trashed
numerous Japan-affiliated businesses.

Fortunately, Chinese security kept the
demonstrators on a tight leash for the most part,
and no outrage comparable to the Benghazi murders
occurred.

Both the Middle East and Chinese
events send important signals to Western
policymakers. Hopefully, these signals are getting
through. But if they are, that is no thanks to the
media and the public affairs commentariat, whose
first priority appears to be to denigrate,
delegitimize, and - dangerously - downplay the
significance of these demonstrations.

As
to the Benghazi incident, the University of
Michigan's Juan Cole has established himself as
something of a pro bono goodwill ambassador
for the new Libyan government. He appears eager to
promote the success of the new Libyan order to
vindicate his support for the NATO-led
intervention and promote it as a precedent for
intervention in other places, like Syria.

To that end, he journeyed to Libya this
summer to counter arguments that the deposition of
Gaddafi had created a power vacuum that had been
filled with all sorts of unsavory, heavily armed
militia.

When the Benghazi outrage
occurred, Professor Cole once again urged Western
opinion to put it in the proper perspective:

What happened in Benghazi was the
action of a tiny fringe, sort of like Ku Klux
Klan violence in the US. It isn't typical of the
new Libya, and Benghazi is not a lawless or
militia-ridden city. [1]

France's Le
Figaro and France24 looked into matters a little
more deeply and painted a picture that looked
something like chaos in a...well, in a lawless, militia-ridden
city. It appears that the first responders to the
attack were Benghazi's apparently ubiquitous
militias, and even they were taken aback by the
violence of the situation:

[A] fighter with the Shuhada Libya
al-Hurra brigade, who declined to be named, said
he witnessed the assault on the US consulate and
he was sure it was a planned attack.

"They knew the embassy [consulate] very
well. They came with heavy weapons and they
overtook the place very fast, it was very quick.
You can't do something like that without
planning," he said.

... he was unable to
get near the consulate premises due to the heavy
fighting Tuesday night. Instead his group of
fighters were stuck a few blocks away from the
by-now burning building, vainly awaiting orders
from their commanders. [2]

Ambassador
Stevens suffered a fatal case of smoke inhalation
at the embassy. He was transported to the hospital
in extremis by some civilians who discovered him
while rummaging through the debris.

Other
embassy and security personnel withdrew to another
location about a mile away - the "safe house". To
evacuate them, the United States and the new Libya
turned to US Marines and more Libyan militiamen,
this time from the Dernaa Brigade, flying them
into Benghazi from Tripoli. Nevertheless, three
more Americans died.

Contrary to Cole's
assertion, the correct analogy for the Salafists
does not appear to be the Ku Klux Klan. For one
thing, to my recollection the Ku Klux Klan has
never mounted a successful four-and-a-half-hour
heavy weapons assault against a well-defended
target in the heart of a major city.

Another issue is the demographics.

Cole points out that only 28% of
Bengahazis have a favorable opinion of the
Salafis, versus 60% for the United States. He is
apparently citing an IRI poll from last autumn
(which also pointed out that Benghazis' affection
for the United States pales before their love of
democracy powerhouse Qatar, which booked a 94%
approval rating).

Unfortunately, a 28%
favorability rating for a relatively extreme
religious and social philosophy translates into
about 100,000 adults in a city of 700,000 and is
not the recipe for political irrelevance.

For purposes of comparison, there are
fewer than 10,000 acknowledged members of the Ku
Klux Klan in the United States. Roll in the
membership of all the myriad splintered hardcore
white supremacist groups, add their on-line
sympathizers and fellow travelers: maybe 150,000
to 200,000 in a nation of 314 million people. It
would be safe to say that white supremacists today
enjoy a favorability rate of perhaps 0.1%.

The Salafis' 28% favorability in Benghazi,
interestingly, is in the same ballpark for the
current favorability of America's politically
powerful Tea Party movement. (Favorability for the
Muslim Brotherhood clocked in at a similar level,
31%, in the IRI poll.)

A more recent
Oxford Research poll of the whole country found
only 29% of respondents in that suspicious and
fractured land wanted to live in a democracy
(presumably because national elections could
deliver national dominance to partisans of the
wrong city/region/clan) and 35% expressed
preference for rule by a strongman.

Add to
the political mix the finding that 16% of Libyans
stated they were willing to take up arms to
advance their political beliefs. The pollsters
helpfully calculated:

This would mean that around 630,000
people were potential fighters, in addition to
the 280,000 who previously took up arms.
[3]

Regionalism, alienation, distrust,
militancy, access to weapons ... The correct
framing for Libya is not burgeoning democracy with
a KKK problem. It is "powderkeg with a hundred
fuses waiting to be lit".

Boxing in the
Salafists is a messy, dangerous, and polarizing
exercise. That it has gone as well as it has is a
tribute to rare US persistence and skillful
execution of a nation building objective.

To argue that the Salafists represent
merely a marginalized fringe is perhaps a useful
exercise in spin to sell Libya to the US public as
a suitable destination for American blood,
treasure, and attention, but is not as useful to
policymakers - or politicians or the public trying
to make sense of things if and when the Libyan
situation blows up again.

A similar
dynamic is unfolding in East Asia, this time
involving two nuclear weapons powers (one
declared, the People's Republic of China, another
on the threshold of weaponization, Japan) 1.5
billion people and the economic future of the
planet.

In the Western media a
considerable, perhaps excessive, amount of time
and energy has been spent denigrating the
anti-Japanese demonstrations for their allegedly
unspontaneous character. Chinageeks' Charles
Custer perhaps went the furthest, titling his post
on the subject, "China's Anti-Japan Riots Are
State-Sponsored. Period." [4]

He justified
his assertion with the declaration that no Chinese
security forces were present at the
demonstrations, indicating that the demonstrators
were docile stooges marching against Japanese
facilities on regime orders.

This was
demonstrably incorrect, as photos showing
protesters mixing it up with security forces in
Shenzhen and Chengdu indicate, and the comments
section contains some unedifying wrangling between
Custer and some of his commentators. [5]

That the anti-Japanese demonstrations are
condoned and facilitated by the Chinese regime is
incontrovertible. Applications to demonstrate were
expeditiously approved, making it safe, easy and
convenient for people who were encouraged to leave
their places of employment to join the crowds.

Caixin reported this amusing exchange
between one of their reporters and police at a
demo:

A nearby street was filled with
police, most of them relaxed. When I
photographed the protest, he smiled and said:
"You can join the protest."
"Can I? Won't I
be pulled out?" I asked.
"Since it is me who
let you in, who dares pull you out!" he said.
"But I haven't applied for permission," I
said.
"It is OK. The organizer has applied,"
he said.
A middle-aged policeman also
encouraged me to join the parade.
"Can I
shout 'Punish corruptions'?" I inquired.
"No, you can't!" the middle-aged officer
said, suddenly seriously.
"Only slogans
concerned with Diaoyu Islands are allowed," a
young policeman chimed in. [6]

However, trying to parse the issue of
the degree of sincerity of the demonstrations
would appear to be futile. It is quite plausible
that the offer of a day off, a ride downtown, and
a free lunch-box could induce quite a few Chinese
to join an anti-Japanese demonstration.

But that's only because anti-Japan
sentiment is already rife within China and
confrontation with Japan arouses genuine passion
for many Chinese. In several cities, the police
and paramilitaries had their hands full trying to
keep the demonstrations against Japanese
businesses in bounds.

China Daily and a
Japanese think-tank, Genron NPO, have conducted an
annual survey of Chinese and Japanese attitudes
for the past eight years. This year, 31% of
Chinese respondents held a favorable opinion of
Japan, with the unfavorable north of 60% (the
Japanese breakout toward China is even worse, with
favorable of only 15.6% and the unfavorable
probably over 80%). [7]

A quick scamper
through some dissident blogs on Weibo did not turn
up any posts along the lines of "Stop picking on
Japan and go back home, you stupid demonstrators".
One may speculate that few dissidents, in addition
to his or her other worries, are interested in
enduring an orchestrated web-wide accusation of
treason to the Han race.

Instead, there
seems to be a veiled hope that, since the Chinese
government has allowed people to get on the street
en masse to abuse Japan, perhaps the demonstrators
will start shouting anti-government slogans as
well, and the mass anti-regime movement that the
dissidents have never been able to kickstart
themselves will grow out of the anti-Japanese
protests.

That doesn't seem to have
happened.

The demonstrators appear to have
the mindset of a violence-prone crowd of soccer
fans presented with irresistible and vulnerable
targets. They displayed little interest in going
beyond the easy exercise of anti-Japanese
prejudice for the life-changing perils of turning
their ire on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The preoccupation with attempts to prove
the insincerity of the anti-Japanese
demonstrations by demonstrating their government
links is, I believe, a dangerous distraction.

Because it seems to imply that, if the
demonstrations are
government-organized/facilitated/supported/condoned,
they can be dismissed and, if the demonstrations
are removed from the equation, the PRC's strategy
on the Senkakus/Diaoyu can be dismissed as a
futile exercise in Astroturfing (simulation of a
grass-roots movement).

This, I think,
draws from the preconception that impassioned
popular demonstrations against authoritarian regimes in the
Middle East, in Russia, and in China are the only
ones that matter, and if they advance the agenda
of authoritarian actors, they can be ignored.

However, the regime's intention is not to
try to manufacture a false Chinese simulacrum of
Tahrir Square.

I believe the CCP is
sending a series of messages to Japan and the
United States via these demonstrations, and to
send the message it is important that everybody is
aware that they actually were state-managed.

First, the CCP is determined not to back
down in the Senkaku/Diaoyu conflict. Although
Japanese Prime Minister Noda stepped in to
purchase the islands as a conciliatory measure in
order to short circuit a carnival of provocation
planned by Shintaro Ishihara, the governor of
Tokyo, the CCP whipped up anti-Japanese sentiment
and demonstrations on the announcement of the
purchase regardless, in order to demonstrate its
deterrent capabilities in economic and diplomatic
warfare or, in old-fashioned terms, fire a shot
across Japan's bow.

Second, China does not
intend to provoke a military confrontation at the
islands that would viscerally alarm Japan's
populace and elite, and allow Japan to deploy its
unanswerable geostrategic advantage: the military
alliance with the United States. China's
provocative movements in the waters around the
islands are carried out by maritime surveillance
vessels and fishing boats, not the navy.

Instead, Japan will be confronted at its
most vulnerable point: the economic interests of
its corporations and the well-being of its
citizens inside China.

Third, the CCP is
conveying that it can manage the unrest that goes
hand-in-hand with a mass campaign, and will be
prepared to escalate the damage it inflicts on
Japanese businesses in China as needed despite the
losses suffered by the Chinese economy and Chinese
employment.

Finally, the ultimate purpose
of the furor over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands is to
demonstrate that Japan must rely on accommodation
with China, as well as its alliance with the
United States, to achieve peace and prosperity.

With this background, US Secretary of
Defense Leon Panetta's recent remarks in Japan can
be taken as an acknowledgement - at least for now
- of the limits of American power and the
challenges facing the pivot into Asia:

The United States, in all cases of
disputed territory involving Pacific waters,
urges "calm and restraint on all sides," the
secretary said.

"United States policy
with regards to these islands is well known, and
obviously, we stand by our treaty obligations,"
Panetta said. "But the United States, as a
matter of policy, does not take a position with
regards to competing sovereignty claims."
[8]

In other words, the threshold for
active and open US involvement in the controversy
is a military clash over the islands between Japan
and China. Short of that ...

Panetta's
remarks are not a matter of throwing Japan under
the bus, but they do reflect the reality that
there are limits to what the United States can,
will, and wishes to do about the Diaoyu/Senkaku
islands. And they reinforce the signals sent by
the Chinese demonstrations.

It looks like
the Japanese government - at least the current,
relatively cautious and non-confrontational
government, which may not be in power very much
longer - got the message:

"We do not want anything that would
affect the general bilateral relations between
Japan and China," Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu
Fujimura said at a press conference Tuesday. He
emphasized that the government has paid special
consideration to China, in putting three of the
five islets under state control.

The
government will not construct any port
facilities as shelters for fishing boats or
improve the lighthouse, but keep the three
islets as they are, at least for the time being.
[9]

It would appear that, at least for
the time being, China has come up with a
diplomatically and economically costly but
effective pushback to the cycle of provocation
that was driving the Senkaku/Diaoyu confrontation.
If and when the Noda government falls and is
replaced by a new hardline Japanese government
with a mandate for confrontation with China, the
US will be trying to hold it back, not egg it on.

The anti-Japanese formula may also be
applied to dealings with Vietnam and the
Philippines over the South China Sea disputes.

In other words, China's anti-Japanese
demonstrations are not a pathetic charade. They
are dead serious - and successful.

Monday, September 10, 2012

[My current piece for Asia Times. It can be reposted if ATOl is credited and a link provided.]

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton recently paid what is expected to be her
final official visit to Beijing. She received a
stern reception from Chinese officialdom,
including the official media, and also suffered
what appears to have been a personal rebuke.

Clinton's press entourage was abuzz
concerning the cancellation of a meeting with
Chinese president-in-waiting Xi Jinping.

Of course, it is possible that the excuses
that circulated through the press corps - that Xi
had a scheduling conflict and/or a bad
back - were the truth. Xi
also canceled a meeting with the prime minister of
Singapore, Lee Hsien Loong. [1] However, the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) may have decided
that Clinton's last visit was the final and most
appropriate opportunity to administer a snub - and
a message.

Per her position as secretary
of state, Clinton is entitled to meet with her
opposite number in Beijing, Foreign Minister Yang
Jiechi. However, because of a variety of
circumstances both historical (the importance of
the relationship between the United States and
China, Clinton's special status as spouse of a
former US president) and immediate (the fraught
current state of Sino-US relations, the fact that
this is probably Clinton's last official visit to
China), she also met with President Hu Jintao and
Premier Wen Jiabao.

From an official
perspective, there are no grounds for Clinton to
feel snubbed on this trip, and also from an
official perspective, there are no grounds for
Clinton to meet with Xi Jinping. After all,
Clinton and her team are on the way out,
regardless of whether President Barack Obama wins
re-election or is replaced in the White House by
Mitt Romney.

Xi Jinping, on the other
hand, is not yet in the office of president of
China. That is still Hu Jintao's job. Perhaps Hu
did not take pleasure in the idea that the United
States was going around him to cultivate relations
with Xi before Hu had vacated his presidential
chair.

Possibly, the Chinese leadership
also felt that Clinton wanted to meet with Xi to
pad her Rolodex so she can claim that she has
guanxi to burn with the new generation of
China's leaders as she embarks on her
post-secretary of state career as politician,
pundit, think-tank leader, and/or corporate
adviser.

If so, the CCP could have used
cancellation of the meeting with Xi to send a
message (to paraphrase the immortal smackdown of
Dan Quayle by the late US senator Lloyd Bentsen
during a vice-presidential debate many years ago):
"I knew Henry Kissinger ... And, Secretary
Clinton, you are no Henry Kissinger."

Actually, Xi Jinping does know Henry
Kissinger (who is, by the way, still alive) and
has met him more than once. Xi met with Kissinger
and a host of other retired US State Department
worthies during his trip to the United States in
February. But he also met with him one-on-one in
Beijing several weeks before his trip to send the
message that China was ready to "seize the day,
seize the hour", to promote bilateral ties. [2]

The CCP leadership value Kissinger as the
symbol, custodian and advocate of a US-China
relationship that is special.

When
relations between the Chinese leadership and
President Obama teetered into the deep freeze
after the disastrous Copenhagen climate summit
(which featured China's furious negotiator
screaming and waving his finger at Obama for what
Beijing perceived to be the cynical US decision to
use it as a scapegoat for the collapse of the
talks), China publicized a meeting between
then-vice-president Li Keqiang (the title that Xi
holds now, by the way) and Kissinger in Beijing to
demonstrate that China wanted to continue
relations in a spirit of positive engagement. [3]

However, Obama decided for political,
economic, moral and geo-strategic reasons (and
perhaps also because of his unsatisfying personal
interactions with the Chinese leadership cadre)
that he had to deal with Beijing from a position
of greater regional strength and eschew immediate
accommodation.

The rest is history,
specifically the strategic pivot to Asia, executed
by Clinton.

China's relationship with the
United States is now special only in the sense
that it is especially awkward and difficult. The
closest Beijing probably has to a US champion of a
special relationship with China today is Robert
Zoellick, the ex-head of the World Bank who now
serves as an adviser to Mitt Romney.

From
Beijing's perspective, the pivot has done little
other than make trouble for China, specifically by
emboldening US allies in the region to make
trouble over maritime issues.

Both Vietnam
and the Philippines passed maritime laws to
formalize their challenges to Chinese claims to
rocks and shoals in the South China Sea. The
Japanese government, goaded by Tokyo governor and
sinophobic hothead Shintaro Ishihara, is taking
steps to buy the Senkakus from their private
owner.

The United States danced around the
issue of whether or not it would back up security
guarantees with the Philippines and Japan on
island issues in a rather equivocal manner.

And Washington further upped the ante by
promoting the line that the South China Sea
disputes should be addressed in negotiations
between Beijing and the various claimants
collectively through the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations, instead of through bilateral talks
between China and its smaller adversaries.

This situation pleases fans of
interminable multilateral jaw-jaw, although a case
can be made that the best way actually to settle
claims is for Beijing to cut joint development
deals with its neighbors one-by-one to unlock in a
reasonably timely manner the immense riches we are
told lurk below these miserable islands.

In the run-up to Clinton's visit - and a
spate of ugly demonstrations (not suppressed with
notable vigor by the Chinese government) and
incidents such as the snatching of the flag from
the Japanese ambassador's official vehicle on one
of the Beijing ring roads (presumably a thuggish
one-off by a Chinese citizen) - the government
clearly took the tack that it was time to tell the
United States that enough was enough and it was
time for Washington back up its rhetoric as
guarantor of security in China's neighboring seas
by reining in its overenthusiastic allies in
Hanoi, Manila and Tokyo.

Xinhua laid out
the case in a story datelined from Washington:

Many of the US actions so far have
been counterproductive to promoting peace and
stability in the Asia-Pacific, as indicated by
the fact that the security situation in the
region has been worsening, rather than
improving, mainly due to the recent escalation
of the territorial disputes in the East China
Sea and the South China Sea.

Washington,
which claims not to take sides in the disputes,
is partly blamed for fueling the tensions
because it has apparently emboldened certain
relevant parties to make provocations against
China in order to achieve undeserved territorial
gains ...

Washington owes Beijing a
thorough, convincing explanation of the true
intentions of its pivot policy, especially on
issues related to China's vital or core
interests. And the United States also needs to
take concrete steps to prove that it is
returning to Asia as a peacemaker, instead of a
troublemaker. [4]

Clinton's visit was
marked by a blizzard of articles in the official
media on this theme:

"China urges US to work for peace in
South China Sea" [5]
"Washington needs to
take concrete steps to promote China-US ties"
[6]
"US owes China convincing explanation of
true intentions of its Asia Pivot policy"
[7]
"Commentary: US should refrain from
sending wrong signals over South China Sea" [8]

That is all Xinhua, starting to sound
a lot like nationalist head-knocker Global Times.
Global Times, well, sounded just like Global
Times:

Beijing has a right to
wonder whether US infatuation with the pivot - and
poking China in the eye - is matched with a
responsible stewardship of its real security
responsibilities in East Asia.

For the
Chinese leadership, the true indicator of the
sincerity and utility of the US security role in
East Asia is probably the amount of influence
Washington can bring to bear on Tokyo on its
military and security agenda in general and on the
symbolic issue of the Senkakus.

There is
one compelling reason for Beijing to acquiesce to
the continued US military presence in East Asia:
That is if the United States can forestall the
emergence of Japan as an independent,
nuclear-capable regional military and security
actor.

Thanks to US support of its demands
for a closed nuclear-fuel cycle and an otherwise
unnecessary space program, Japan has the reserves
of weapon-grade plutonium and the
ballistic-missile delivery systems to become a
major nuclear weapons power virtually overnight.
In an interesting analysis, The Associated Press
reviewed the evidence that Iran has perhaps
studied and copied the Japanese strategy of
positioning itself as a nuclear-weapons threshold
state - one without nuclear weapons but with the
resources to weaponize its nuclear capabilities
rapidly if needed.

By forestalling a
nuclear-tinged regional arms race and keeping the
Japan Self-Defense Forces preoccupied with
self-defense instead of power projection, the
United States delivers a real and significant
security and economic benefit to China, and to
East Asia in general. [11]

But the
elevation of the Senkakus to a political, cultural
and security fetish is helping change that.

So far, Japan's national governments,
thanks to US suasion, incentives, and the security
provided by the presence of US forces, have kept
the military genie in the bottle.

Currently, the government of Prime
Minister Yoshihiko Noda has conducted its
demeaning competition with Ishihara to purchase
the Senkakus with a combination of restraint,
frustration and disgust that the Chinese
leadership probably finds very gratifying -
despite its public fulminations.

However,
past results are no guarantee of future
performance.

If Tokyo slips the leash or,
even worse, decides that it can yank America's
chain in the style of the Israeli government by
forcing the US to support Japan and its objectives
in the region through deliberate escalation of
tensions, the perceived utility and value of the
US military role in East Asia will be
significantly compromised in China's eyes.

In May, The Wall Street Journal reported
on the relatively extreme security views of
Shintaro Ishihara, the Tokyo governor who began
the whole Senkaku-purchase brouhaha:

Japan must guard itself from China's
expansionary ambitions, which, Mr Ishihara said,
are now turned outward after conquering Mongolia
and the Uighur people and decimating Tibet ...
"China has declared it would break into someone
else's home. It's time we make sure doors are
properly locked on our islands," he said.
"Before we know it, Japan could become the sixth
star on China's national flag. I really don't
want that to happen" ...

Throughout the
speech, Mr Ishihara referred to China as
"Shina", the name normally associated with the
era of Japanese occupation of China.
[12]

Ishihara also advocated beefed-up
Japanese military spending justified in part
because the US is "unreliable" at least on the
issue of the Senkakus.

It would be
comforting to dismiss Ishihara as an aging, racist
crackpot. However, as Japan's wartime generation
and mindset fade away, political pressure for the
country to assume the role of an armed world power
with its own security policy - and stand up to
China - is growing.

And Ishihara has gone
the extra mile in passing on his xenophobic legacy
to the next generation, via his son Nobuteru.

One theory is that Ishihara ginned up the
Senkaku purchase to advance the political fortunes
of Nobuteru, who is secretary general of the
opposition Liberal Democratic Party and has an
extremely good chance of becoming Japan's next
prime minister if the requisite amount of
intra-party and inter-party skulduggery can be
brought to bear. [13]

The prospect that
the Japanese government and foreign and military
policy may soon be in the hands of a group of
China-bashing reactionaries - and the US
government in the hands of China-bashing
neo-liberals or neo-conservatives indifferent to
Chinese anxieties - is not a recipe for Chinese
restraint.

The harsh official Chinese
rhetoric concerning the pivot is perhaps more than
a farewell rebuke to Secretary Clinton. It should
be regarded as an effort to cut through the
China-bashing clutter of the US presidential
campaign with a strident and unambiguous
declaration of Beijing's concern that infatuation
with the pivot has caused the United States to
lose its focus on the critical regional priority
of encouraging restraint among all its allies, but
most of all Japan.

Fans of the pivot - and
advisers to whatever president takes the oath of
office in Washington early next year - may wish to
start thinking about the worst case if China's new
leadership thinks it has to escalate to
confrontation sooner rather than later so it can
either force US Asian policy on to a track more
favorable to China or start crowding US military
power out of the region before it's too late.

One piece of advice: If a crisis erupts -
and the United States genuinely wants to resolve
it - maybe it is better not to send Hillary
Clinton to Beijing.